Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Michael Jackson top earning dead celebrity
Michael Jackson - still alive and famous !!!
Cover Media – 12 hours ago
Michael Jackson has been named the highest earning dead celebrity.
The King of Pop died two years ago from acute Propofol intoxication but his legacy has lived on and he has earned more dead than in the recent years before he passed away.
Forbes magazine have released their list of the year’s Top Earning Dead Celebrities and have placed Michael in the number one spot with an income of $170 million.
Elvis Presley came in second with $55 million, thanks in part to the Cirque du Soleil show Viva Elvis
Marilyn Monroe made a surprising entry at number three with $27 million. The glamorous 50s icon has not been on the list for a while.
An upcoming biopic of the star may have increased interest in the late actress. My Week With Marilyn starring Michelle Williams is due out next month.
Michael is actually the second highest earning pop act, dead or alive, coming in just behind rock band U2.
Top Earning Dead Celebrities – October 2010 to October 2011
1. Michael Jackson - $170 million Musician Died: June 25, 2009 at age 50
2. Elvis Presley - $55 million Singer, Actor Died: Aug. 16, 1977 at age 42
3. Marilyn Monroe - $27 million Actress Died: Aug. 5, 1962 at age 36
4. Charles Schulz - $25 million Cartoonist, creator of the "Peanuts" franchise Died: Feb. 12, 2000 at age 77
5. John Lennon - $12 million Musician Died: Dec. 8, 1980 at age 40
6. Elizabeth Taylor - $12 million Actress Died: March 23, 2011 at age 79
7. Albert Einstein - $10 million Scientist Died: April 18, 1955 at age 76
8. Theodor 'Dr. Seuss' Geisel - $9 million Author of the famed "Dr. Seuss" children's books Died: Sept. 24, 1991 at age 87
9. Jimi Hendrix - $7 million Musician Died: Sept. 18, 1970 at age 27
10. Steig Larsson - $7 million Author of "The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo" series Died: Nov. 9, 2004 at age 50
Saturday, October 22, 2011
7 Gadgets That Won't Be Around in 2020
An Excerpt - 7 Gadgets That Won't Be Around in 2020
By Seth Fiegerman
NEW YORK -- Hindsight may always be 20-20, but you don't need particularly great foresight to know many of the gadgets on today's market won't be around in 2020 given how quickly the tech industry keeps changing. In the first half of the 2000s, retailers were buzzing about the prospects of MP3 players and netbooks, but by the end of the decade, those products had largely been replaced by smartphones and tablets.
As tempting as it may be to imagine otherwise, some of the gadgets you may rely on most right now will likely suffer the same fate and be killed off or made obsolete by the end of this decade. Sure, you may still be able to find these products for sale in certain niche stores, but they will no longer be produced for a mass-market audience.
"You can still find and buy VCRs and there are people still using mainframes from 1992, so it's not like this stuff disappears forever," says Stephen Baker, an industry analyst at the NPD Group. Baker notes that the main reason retailers continue to market and sell outdated products is to cater to shoppers who buy them for nostalgia's sake, but for all intents and purposes the market has left these products in the dust.
So which popular products today will join the likes of VCRs, cassette players and transistor radios in the next few years? We asked five tech analysts to offer their thoughts on the gadgets that will largely be phased out by the end of this decade.
Standalone GPS Systems
The days of spending $200 or more on a standalone GPS device won't last much longer, analysts say.
"Portable navigation devices like those sold by TomTom and Garmin will probably not be sold in 2020, just because mobile phones will have taken on that function themselves and because GPS systems will be standard equipment in cars," says Charles S. Golvin, an analyst at Forrester, a market research firm. As a result, there won't be much of a need to buy a product whose only function is to tell you directions.
If there is a demand for these GPS systems, it will likely come from a very specific segment of consumers.
"Maybe you could argue there will be a market for guys climbing Mount Everest or long-distance truckers or the military, but for the vast majority of consumers, standalone GPS systems will be irrelevant and redundant," Baker says.
E-Readers
The e-reader has already undergone significant changes in its short history, evolving from a product with a keyboard to one with a touchscreen and more recently being integrated into a kind of a tablet-hybrid, but according to Golvin, the market for e-readers will mostly disappear by the end of the decade.
"The tablet will largely supplant the e-reader in the same way that the iPod increasingly gets displaced by smartphones," Golvin says. "Tablets will take on the e-reader function of handling magazine, newspaper and book reading." In essence, spending money on an e-reader that can only handle reading when tablets can do this and more will come to seem as useless as buying a GPS system that can only look up directions when other technology does this as well.
Just how small the e-reader market becomes may depend somewhat on advancements in display technology. One of the biggest incentives for consumers to buy a pure e-reader is to have an e-ink display (like reading from a book) rather than a backlit display (like reading from a computer screen), but according to Golvin, manufacturers are already working on ways to merge the two reading experiences and create a tablet that doubles as an authentic e-reader.
Even then, there may be still be some e-readers on the market at the beginning of next decade, but not many.
"It could be that by 2020 you can still buy a super cheap e-reader for $20, but by and large, the volume of sales will be so close to zero as to be indistinguishable, like CD players are now," he says.
Feature Phones
Several of the products that are likely to be phased out will ultimately be the victim of advances to smartphones, and none more directly than feature phones.
Tim Bajarin, a technology columnist and principle analyst with Creative Strategies, predicts that 80% of all phones sold in 2015 will be smartphones and every phone sold in 2018 will be a smartphone. This rapid decline will come about thanks to a drop in prices for consumers and an increase in revenue opportunities for carriers.
"Even today, the money that is made is not on the phone itself but on the services," Bajarin says, noting that carriers will opt to "fade out" their feature phone option in favor of smartphones with more services.
Low-End Digital Cameras
When Apple unveiled the iPhone 4S last week, smartphone competitors probably weren't the only ones beginning to sweat. Digital camera makers also have much to be worried about. Apple's newest phone has a killer 8-megapixel camera that takes in more light and records video at 1080p HD video. Until recently, those kind of specs were unique to digital cameras, but increasingly smartphones are taking over the market.
"Flip cameras went bye-bye and now low-end camera functions are being taken over by smartphones," says Rob Enderle, principle analyst for the Enderle Group. Going forward, consumers will have less incentive to carry around a camera when they already have a phone in their pocket that takes quality pictures. "The point-and-shooters -- and particularly the cameras that sell for under $200 -- will eventually go away and be replaced by cellphones that do the same thing."
On the other hand, Enderle predicts more expensive and high-tech cameras may have a brighter future, though not by much, as a smaller market of photo enthusiasts seek out professional-quality cameras that go above and beyond what's offered on a phone.
DVD Players
DVD players are in the process of being phased out now by Blu-ray players and will likely be erased from the consumer landscape by the end of the decade.
“The DVD player should be replaced by digital delivery,” says Ian Olgeirson, a senior analyst at SNL Kagan, who points to streaming movie services like Netflix as being the future. “Blu-rays and whatever the next generation high-end movie format emerges could prolong the lifespan because of challenges around streaming, but eventually the disc is going to be phased out.”
The idea of placing a disc into a DVD player to watch a movie will eventually seem as outdated as placing a record on a turntable, which brings us to the next product on our list…
Recordable CDs and DVDs
Using CDs and DVDs to view and store content will soon be a thing of the past.
"CDs are clearly not going to make it over the next 10 years because everything will shift over to pure digital distribution, so all those shiny discs will be gone," Bajarin says. This will be due in part to more streaming options for music and movies and a greater reliance on digital downloads, combined with more efficient storage options for consumers, including USB drives, external hard drives and of course the cloud.
"All a CD is is a medium for distribution of content ... and within 10 years, you won't need a physical transport medium," Bajarin says.
Video Game Consoles
Popular video game systems such as the Wii, PlayStation and Xbox may still be in homes next decade, but they will look much different. Rather than buy a separate console, Enderle expects that consumers will instead buy smart televisions with a gaming system built into it, not to mention tablets and smartphones that will continue to ramp up their gaming options.
“It looks like analog game systems won’t make it until the end of the decade,” Enderle says. “You are already seeing the Wii have a tough time holding on to the market and PlayStation has been struggling for a while.”
The gaming systems that will succeed in the future will be those that manage to move away from being focused solely on video games and more on other entertainment options such as movies, evolving from a traditional game console into more of a set-top box.
By Seth Fiegerman
NEW YORK -- Hindsight may always be 20-20, but you don't need particularly great foresight to know many of the gadgets on today's market won't be around in 2020 given how quickly the tech industry keeps changing. In the first half of the 2000s, retailers were buzzing about the prospects of MP3 players and netbooks, but by the end of the decade, those products had largely been replaced by smartphones and tablets.
As tempting as it may be to imagine otherwise, some of the gadgets you may rely on most right now will likely suffer the same fate and be killed off or made obsolete by the end of this decade. Sure, you may still be able to find these products for sale in certain niche stores, but they will no longer be produced for a mass-market audience.
"You can still find and buy VCRs and there are people still using mainframes from 1992, so it's not like this stuff disappears forever," says Stephen Baker, an industry analyst at the NPD Group. Baker notes that the main reason retailers continue to market and sell outdated products is to cater to shoppers who buy them for nostalgia's sake, but for all intents and purposes the market has left these products in the dust.
So which popular products today will join the likes of VCRs, cassette players and transistor radios in the next few years? We asked five tech analysts to offer their thoughts on the gadgets that will largely be phased out by the end of this decade.
Standalone GPS Systems
The days of spending $200 or more on a standalone GPS device won't last much longer, analysts say.
"Portable navigation devices like those sold by TomTom and Garmin will probably not be sold in 2020, just because mobile phones will have taken on that function themselves and because GPS systems will be standard equipment in cars," says Charles S. Golvin, an analyst at Forrester, a market research firm. As a result, there won't be much of a need to buy a product whose only function is to tell you directions.
If there is a demand for these GPS systems, it will likely come from a very specific segment of consumers.
"Maybe you could argue there will be a market for guys climbing Mount Everest or long-distance truckers or the military, but for the vast majority of consumers, standalone GPS systems will be irrelevant and redundant," Baker says.
E-Readers
The e-reader has already undergone significant changes in its short history, evolving from a product with a keyboard to one with a touchscreen and more recently being integrated into a kind of a tablet-hybrid, but according to Golvin, the market for e-readers will mostly disappear by the end of the decade.
"The tablet will largely supplant the e-reader in the same way that the iPod increasingly gets displaced by smartphones," Golvin says. "Tablets will take on the e-reader function of handling magazine, newspaper and book reading." In essence, spending money on an e-reader that can only handle reading when tablets can do this and more will come to seem as useless as buying a GPS system that can only look up directions when other technology does this as well.
Just how small the e-reader market becomes may depend somewhat on advancements in display technology. One of the biggest incentives for consumers to buy a pure e-reader is to have an e-ink display (like reading from a book) rather than a backlit display (like reading from a computer screen), but according to Golvin, manufacturers are already working on ways to merge the two reading experiences and create a tablet that doubles as an authentic e-reader.
Even then, there may be still be some e-readers on the market at the beginning of next decade, but not many.
"It could be that by 2020 you can still buy a super cheap e-reader for $20, but by and large, the volume of sales will be so close to zero as to be indistinguishable, like CD players are now," he says.
Feature Phones
Several of the products that are likely to be phased out will ultimately be the victim of advances to smartphones, and none more directly than feature phones.
Tim Bajarin, a technology columnist and principle analyst with Creative Strategies, predicts that 80% of all phones sold in 2015 will be smartphones and every phone sold in 2018 will be a smartphone. This rapid decline will come about thanks to a drop in prices for consumers and an increase in revenue opportunities for carriers.
"Even today, the money that is made is not on the phone itself but on the services," Bajarin says, noting that carriers will opt to "fade out" their feature phone option in favor of smartphones with more services.
Low-End Digital Cameras
When Apple unveiled the iPhone 4S last week, smartphone competitors probably weren't the only ones beginning to sweat. Digital camera makers also have much to be worried about. Apple's newest phone has a killer 8-megapixel camera that takes in more light and records video at 1080p HD video. Until recently, those kind of specs were unique to digital cameras, but increasingly smartphones are taking over the market.
"Flip cameras went bye-bye and now low-end camera functions are being taken over by smartphones," says Rob Enderle, principle analyst for the Enderle Group. Going forward, consumers will have less incentive to carry around a camera when they already have a phone in their pocket that takes quality pictures. "The point-and-shooters -- and particularly the cameras that sell for under $200 -- will eventually go away and be replaced by cellphones that do the same thing."
On the other hand, Enderle predicts more expensive and high-tech cameras may have a brighter future, though not by much, as a smaller market of photo enthusiasts seek out professional-quality cameras that go above and beyond what's offered on a phone.
DVD Players
DVD players are in the process of being phased out now by Blu-ray players and will likely be erased from the consumer landscape by the end of the decade.
“The DVD player should be replaced by digital delivery,” says Ian Olgeirson, a senior analyst at SNL Kagan, who points to streaming movie services like Netflix as being the future. “Blu-rays and whatever the next generation high-end movie format emerges could prolong the lifespan because of challenges around streaming, but eventually the disc is going to be phased out.”
The idea of placing a disc into a DVD player to watch a movie will eventually seem as outdated as placing a record on a turntable, which brings us to the next product on our list…
Recordable CDs and DVDs
Using CDs and DVDs to view and store content will soon be a thing of the past.
"CDs are clearly not going to make it over the next 10 years because everything will shift over to pure digital distribution, so all those shiny discs will be gone," Bajarin says. This will be due in part to more streaming options for music and movies and a greater reliance on digital downloads, combined with more efficient storage options for consumers, including USB drives, external hard drives and of course the cloud.
"All a CD is is a medium for distribution of content ... and within 10 years, you won't need a physical transport medium," Bajarin says.
Video Game Consoles
Popular video game systems such as the Wii, PlayStation and Xbox may still be in homes next decade, but they will look much different. Rather than buy a separate console, Enderle expects that consumers will instead buy smart televisions with a gaming system built into it, not to mention tablets and smartphones that will continue to ramp up their gaming options.
“It looks like analog game systems won’t make it until the end of the decade,” Enderle says. “You are already seeing the Wii have a tough time holding on to the market and PlayStation has been struggling for a while.”
The gaming systems that will succeed in the future will be those that manage to move away from being focused solely on video games and more on other entertainment options such as movies, evolving from a traditional game console into more of a set-top box.
The Seven Weirdest Things About Moammar Gadhafi
An Excerpt
- Seven Weirdest Things About Moammar Gadhafi
Col. Moammar Gadhafi, the dictator who ruled Libya for 42 years, was killed by rebels in his hometown of Sirte on Thursday. A dictator who oppressed his own people and sponsored terrorism abroad, Gadhafi's legacy will be stained by violence. But beyond his brutality, Gadhafi will be remembered for something else entirely… being a first-class weirdo.
In no particular order, ABCNews.com brings you the seven weirdest things about Moammar Gadhafi.
1. The "Bulletproof" Tent: When Gadhafi was at home in Tripoli, he lived in a well fortified compound with a complex system of escape tunnels. But when he travelled abroad, this "Bedouin" brought a bit of the desert with him, camping out in the world's capitals. The tent was so heavy it needed to be flown on a separate plane, wherever the dictator travelled. To complete the Arabian Nights theme, Gadhafi often would tether a camel or two outside.
2. All-Female Virgin Bodyguard Retinue: They apparently weren't around when Gadhafi needed them most on Thursday, but the eccentric dictator was historically protected by 40 well trained bodyguards – all of them women. The bodyguards, called "Amazons," were all reportedly virgins who took a vow of chastity upon joining the dictator's retinue. The women, trained at an all-female military academy, were handpicked by Gadhafi. They wore elaborate uniforms, as well as makeup and high-heeled combat boots.
3. His "Voluptuous" Ukrainian Nurse: For a decade, Galyna Kolotnytska, a Ukrainian nurse often described in the press as "voluptuous," was regularly seen at the dictator's side. Kolotnytska was described in a leaked diplomatic cable as one of Gadhafi's closest aides and was rumored to have a romantic relationship with him. Several other Ukrainian women served as nurses and they all referred to him as "Papa" or "Daddy."
4. Crush on Condoleezza Rice: In 2007, Gadhafi called former Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice his "darling black African woman" and on a 2008 visit she made to Tripoli, the dictator gave her $200,000 worth of gifts, including a ring and a lute. But it wasn't until rebels stormed his Tripoli compound that the depths of the dictator's infatuation were exposed. There among Gadhafi's belongings was a carefully composed photo album made up of dozens of images of no one but Rice.
5. Fear of Flying and Elevators: Part of the reason Gadhafi loved travelling with that tent of his was because he was worried about lodging in a hotel where he'd have to ride an elevator. According to leaked diplomatic cables, the Libyan didn't like heights much either, and would only climb to a height of 35 steps. He therefore wasn't much of a fan of flying, refusing to travel by air for more than eight hours at a time. When he would travel to New York of the U.N.'s annual general assembly, he would spend a night in Portugal on the way to the U.S.
6. Bunga Bunga: In 2010, one of Gadhafi's most eccentric pastimes was exposed by Italian prosecutors investigating Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. A 17-year-old prostitute named Karima el-Mahroug, better known as Ruby Heartstealer, revealed that she had been invited to an orgy, called a "bunga bunga." "Silvio told me that he'd copied that formula from Muammar Gadhafi," she told prosecutors according to La Repubblica. "It's a ritual of [Gadhafi's] African harem."
7. An Eclectic Wardrobe: In those photos of world leaders standing shoulder to shoulder on the sidelines of this or that international forum, Gadhafi was always the easiest to pick out. His wardrobe was an eclectic mix of ornate military uniforms, Miami Vice style leisure suits, and Bedouin robes. Gadhafi, who pushed for a pan-African federation of nations, often decorated his outfits with images of the African continent. He'd sport safari shirts printed with an Africa pattern, or wear garish pins or necklaces of the continent.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)